"So, where do you want me to put this?"
He had a roll of stiff white paper under his arm. It looked to be about as tall as a standard poster board, but wider. "Just set it out on the far side of the table."
He stood it on end and held it, so it wouldn't unravel. "I don't think it's gonna fit here. Maybe if we move some pictures, or better yet, the chairs. We can do it on the floor," he gave me his troublemaking smirk.
"Well, how big is it?" It couldn't have been bigger than the table. The way he had it rolled up made it look like it should have fit across the end of it.
"Ten feet." He moved some chairs around, and then he let the roll spring open across the floor.
"How'd you get it so long?"
"I was born that way." I didn't look amused. "I got the width of a poster board and just cut the roll straight. You can't leave jagged edges, it'll lead to trouble." He smoothed it out and started to lay clusters of pictures out. I had put them in stacks chronologically, and as he laid them out, I got the perfect idea for our project.
"A narrative timeline, you're a genius! We can have the pictures all displayed in chronological order, with a small summary about each one under it! This poster board is perfect!" I kissed his cheek, and he pulled me into his lap. His mouth attacked mine. Why was he so damn easy to get lost in? My body just recognized him as the orgasm giver, and it seemed to constantly want to coax him to give me more.
I didn't know what happened, but next thing I knew, his mother was looking down at us, smiling as she shook her head. "Marky, let the girl up. You're never going to get this project done if you keep distracting her like that."
I shoved him off at lightning speed, scooting way from him. "I can't believe…" I couldn't believe a lot of things, like how he could distract me so fast, how one kiss could blow up into full-on dry humping on the floor, or that once again, we had been caught by his mother. I wiped my mouth and made sure my clothes were in place.
Marky walked over and reached a hand out to me to help me up. My face was so red hot I was sure it would explode. The ass smirked, like it was hilarious I had been humiliated by him yet again.
He yanked me against his body as he helped me up, and I promptly shoved him away. "You stay over there, on that side of the table," I ordered, causing him to laugh.
"Christ, Marky, leave the girl alone, she's actually trying to get some work done."
"How am I supposed to help from over here?" he complained, as he took his place on the far side of the table.
"You hand me the pictures I want with tape on them. I'll put them on the poster over here."
I ignored his pout and grabbed the second roll of tape. I went to work, attaching the first stacks of pictures that were already laid out. I felt his eyes boring into me, and I would admit that I might have knelt on the floor with my ass in the air as I worked, because I wanted that orgasm before we went our separate ways. There were plenty of quiet places between here and my house, far away from his parents.
I moved down the poster carefully, making sure there would be plenty of space to attach the part of the report that went with that grouping of pictures. Marky put tape on each set of pictures and pushed them to the edge of the table to be placed on the poster by me. I never once looked up, worried at what I might find. He'd had me a horny mess twice today, and I knew I wouldn't be able to resist a third time.
I taped the last picture to our project and stood up, very pleased with myself. "All done, this is so amazing. It'll be an easy ‘A’ for us."
I hadn't realized it, but his mother was in the doorway, smiling at us. "Let me get a picture of you two holding up the banner."
She rushed off before we could answer, and Marky had me up against him the moment she turned her back to us. "Don't think I didn't notice you waving that little ass of yours at me." He gave it a good pinch. "You want it bad, don't you? You're just dying for that release."
I answered by kissing him. He ground into me hard. "Once were done here."
"Not here, not with your parents," I barely breathed out.
He went straight to attacking my neck, holding my hips hard against him with one hand, and the other was in my hair to help give him leverage to move me where he wanted to kiss me.
"Boy, don't make me hose you down," his mother’s voice snapped me back into reality.
"What, I let her finish the project. All the pictures are on," he defended with a smirk, while I tried to squirm out of his arms. I finally got away, gave him a glare, and let out a huff.
"Enough, Marky, hold up the poster. I've got to get a picture."
"What do we have here?" his father walked in.
"They just finished their poster!" his mother squealed.
"Poster for what?" he asked, looking it over.
"The history project!" she snapped at him.
"It's real?" He really did sound surprised.
"Yup, and we're done," Marky sounded very pleased with himself.
"Look at my boy. He's got a brain in that head after all." He messed up his son's hair and stepped back. "Get a picture of this, baby, it's amazing." He moved back, pinched his wife's ass, and pulled her in front of him. They took several different pictures of us with our poster. You would've thought it was graduation or prom.
My cell phone rang with my mother's ringtone, and I quickly apologized. "I'm sorry, it's my mom. I have to take it."
They waved me off, and as I moved out of the room, they descended on Marky, congratulating him on the history project that actually existed.
They were crazy, but the kind of crazy that was sweet.
"Hey, Mom." I wondered what kind of mood she would be in.
"Where the hell are you? Your father's going to be here in twenty minutes, and I don't have a damn thing to drink. You need to take my ID down to the corner store and pick me something up to get me through dinner. I don't know why that damn bastard even bothers to come home anymore."
She just hung up on me, and I did my best to hold myself together. I didn't know why I felt so upset. I was used to her calling and asking me to bring her something to drink. I didn't know why it suddenly bothered me so much. I took a deep breath and turned around. I was met with three solemn faces. "I need a ride home, please." My eyes hit the floor. I couldn't stand to see their disappointment. It didn't matter if I was a good Italian girl. If my parents were fucked up, I was sure they thought I was, too.
"Yeah, let me get the poster rolled up," Marky broke the silence.
I just nodded and loaded my backpack as fast as possible. I was surprised, when his father walked in and set down a large bottle of wine in front of me.
"So, I guess there's no denying you heard that," I mumbled.
He just squeezed my shoulder and sighed, looking sad. "It's fine. We can't control how our parents act towards each other."
His mother set down another bottle and pulled me into a hug, causing me to burst into tears.
"I'm sorry," I cried. "I know my family is messed up, but I'd really like to still be Marky's friend."
"Oh, baby girl, you're far from messed up. You're so good for our boy." She stepped back, cupping my cheeks. "He did a history assignment! You're not messed up. You're a miracle worker."
We all burst out laughing.
Marky took my bag from me and carried the poster. I carried the bottles his parents had given me.
The drive was quiet, and when he pulled up, he got out of the car, making me freak out. I really didn't want him to meet my mom. She was mostly sober, and that meant she was extra bitchy. "You don't want to meet my mom."
"Are you ashamed of me?" He looked hurt.
I glanced at my door. "She's just not a very nice person."
He smirked. "Gabby, you do know my last name is Valente, right? I know how to deal with not nice people."
I felt stupid. "Fine, but you can't put a hit out on my mom when she pisses you off."
I opened the door, and I wasn't two steps in, before my mother started yelling
. "What took you so long? Your asshole of a father will be here any minute, and I don't have a damn drink. How the hell am I supposed to stand listening to his obnoxious voice?" I came around the corner, so she could see me. I held out the bottles to her. "Jesus, how the hell did you get this? Did Sal let you get them without my ID?"
"No, my parents wanted to send a thank you to your family. Gabriella has been helping me with my history class. I'm Marcello Valente." He reached out a hand for her to shake, and she glared at it.
"Valente? I know about you!" she shouted. "What the hell is he talking about?" I really hoped she wasn't going to do anything stupid. "You better stay the hell away from that boy. He's a Valente, Gabby. He'll get you in trouble, or killed!"
"Mom, he's my friend. We go to school together."
"Nonsense, you go to a good Catholic school. They don't let the likes of him in there. Are you his dirty whore? They don't settle down, Gabby. Even after they have a wife, they have a goomah. That's what you call it, isn't it?"
"Ma'am…" Marky tried to cut in, but she wasn't having it.
"What, you want to screw me, too? Why the hell not." She snatched the bottles out of my hands and took off into the kitchen.
I heard the front door close and knew my father was home. We turned to see him come down the hall. He looked Marky up and down. "Who's this?"
"He's my history project partner, Marcello Valente."
My dad flinched, when I said Marky's last name. He shook his head at me and walked away, not saying a word to either of us.
"So, that's my family. You should probably go, before they decide to yell at you, instead of each other."
I would swear it was like it had been planned, the way they started shouting at each other, as if on cue.
"It's my house, why the hell shouldn't I come home! I pay for every damn thing in it, even your fat lazy ass!" my father retorted to something my mother had said. I shoved Marky out the front door to muffle my mother's reply.
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone about them," I pointed over my shoulder.
Marky frowned. "Why would I say anything?"
"My parents were very…they were terribly rude to you. I'm sorry."
He pulled me into his arms. "I get it now. I thought you were crazy, standing there watching my parents fight with a smile on your face. I figured you were fucked in the head, but your ass is hot, so I didn't mind." He gave me a good pinch to prove his point. "I get why you were smiling." He leaned down and kissed my lips, much softer than he ever had before. There was no sexual tension. It was so damn confusing. "I'll see you tomorrow," he smiled, and then took off in his car.
I sat down on the front porch and waited for things to quiet down. I hoped my mother would get too drunk to argue soon and maybe even pass out. My dad would bury himself in the TV then with his beer, and neither of them would remember I even existed. I knew that sounded horrible, but that was just the way life worked at my house.
Chapter 6 - Up in Smoke
The next morning, I felt a little lighter. I think it was because someone knew how messed up stuff at my house was, and they were okay with it. When I opened my door, Marky was there, leaning on the light post. "Hey, I decided to walk you to school, or across the street," he nodded toward the school.
"You're here awfully early." I snuggled under the arm he wrapped around me, not even thinking twice about it.
"Yeah, well, I've never actually turned an assignment in, so I'm a little excited." The twinkle in his eyes was adorable. He really was excited about turning in our history project.
He walked me straight to our history class. School hadn't started, but I knew Mr. Ramos would be there. "Morning, what can I help you with?"
"We finished our history project," Marky proudly pulled it out from under my arm. "You should see this mess, it took days!" he lamented, but you could tell he was happy about it.
Mr. Ramos seemed amused and let Marky unroll the poster. "We did a timeline with pictures. It's awesome, right? That is so an 'A' for us."
Mr. Ramos walked from one end to the other, looking at each of the pictures. "It definitely appears that way. I look forward to seeing you present it to the class. I think we have a real winner here," Mr. Ramos smiled, pointing to our poster. "Class favorite gets an extra ten points, and favorite pick of all of the classes gets another twenty-five points. That's an extra thirty-five points on top of the assignment score. You both did very well. I wouldn't be surprised if you won both."
"I know, right?" Marky bumped my shoulder, making me smile wider.
I put away our project. "We should probably go last, when it's time to do presentations. I think we might've gone a little overboard and have a lot of stuff to cover," I suggested.
"That's sounds like a good idea. Besides, we wouldn't want anyone to feel bad about their own project before they're even able to talk about them," Mr. Ramos winked.
"Thank you, Mr. Ramos. We'll see you later." I pulled a giddy Marky out of the room.
"He loved it, didn't he?"
"Yes, he did. Since we have a few minutes, we should go over our presentation parts. I didn't know if you wanted to stand up with me, but since our poster is more of a banner, it's required now. I wrote you out a script for the first half of the banner." He looked a little nervous, so I gave his hand a squeeze. "I never did find out your reading level, so I didn't use a bunch of dumbass pretentious words we'd have to look up the definition to. I figured the timeline would hold its own without having to fry our brains."
The truth was, I had watched him struggle to read through our history chapter. I had stayed up and rewrote the first half of the report. I mostly simplified the sentence structure and used smaller and more common words. I was going to do the whole report, but I had to sleep at some point. I figured this way it would look like he'd had more of a hand in writing the report itself.
I handed him the page and a half that was meant for him to read. "Do you want me to go over it with you? I probably should've checked it for typos before I printed it out. I printed ours out and then did a double check on the report we're turning in."
"Sure." He led me behind the school, where we both sat on the ground. I helped him read through his section three times, before he got through the whole mess smoothly the fourth time through.
"Perfect, we're gonna ace this." His excitement was catching, and next thing I knew, I was in his lap, kissing him hard.
He let out a chuckle, when I finally released his lips. "Who would've thought schoolwork could be so rewarding?"
The day was going great, despite the glares from the whole female population. No one had seen us kiss, but several had seen him walk me to school. The fact that we were grinning like idiots didn't help, either. I kept telling myself it was because of the history report. I was afraid to even consider that I might like Marky as anything more than a friend.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" Robert poked at the rolled-up report under my arm. I pulled it a little closer to my body, hugging it. I knew Marky would be there in a moment, so I had to get rid of Robert, before Marky showed up and started something with him.
"It's the history project I kept telling you about. Now move."
I went to step around him, but he grabbed my arm and held me in place next to him. "Is that what he told you?" He poked at the poster. "That's not ordinary paper. That's the paper of a killer." I tried to pull away from him, but he held fast. "They cover a room with this stuff to catch all the blood, when they torture someone who's crossed them."
"I don't know who the hell you're talking about." My skin was crawling, and I started to feel sick.
"You know why this paper is so special? The back is plastic and has a chemical coating, so the blood won't seep through, and it's highly flammable, taking all evidence with it when it burns."
I yanked out of his hold. "You need to leave me alone!"
"No, you need to quit fighting me and tell me what I want to know!" he grabbed my arm again. "You d
on't believe they're killers? Well, let me show you," he sneered and whipped out a lighter.
Suddenly, the rolled poster in my arms exploded into flames, engulfing the whole project instantly. I screamed and dropped it, but not fast enough. My bare arms were burned badly from the searing hot chemical flash, and my face and clothes were scorched.
"What the hell!" I heard Marky before I saw him. The next thing I knew, Robert was on the floor, and security was pulling them apart, while the principal rushed me to the nurse.
"He tried to set me on fire!" I sobbed. The whole damn mess just came crashing down on me. "He ruined our report. Do you know how long I spent on that thing? How hard it was to get Marcello to actually care enough to do anything? He worked on it, Principal Stewart! He helped me complete the assignment. He was so proud, his parents even took pictures," I cried, as the nurse treated my burns.
I looked up to see her gritting her teeth. She looked pissed off.
"Karen, would you mind giving me a minute with Gabby? Her parents need to be notified of the situation as well."
I carefully reached for a tissue, crying out when I moved my blistered arms. My tears exploded all over again.
"Gabby, I'm so very sorry this happened to you." He took a deep breath and steeled himself. "I'm going to tell you something, but it can't leave this room." I nodded. "Robert is a Federal agent, trying to find a crack in the Valente stronghold. The young cocky generation is the best target. He was supposed to be going after Marcello and his friends. I don't know why he became so fixated on you."
"I knew it." I had been aware the whole time why Robert was so pissed. "I figured it out on the first day that he wasn't a student. I just didn't know who he was. He must've realized I knew he wasn’t legit, because I tried to steer clear of him. I didn't want to be around some strange man in my school."
"Oh, Gabby, why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't know what to say. 'I think this is an old guy?' What would you have done?"
He shook his head. "I would've had you pulled from school until the investigation was done. Your knowledge of him could've interfered with the whole mission."
Straight Up Interfererence Page 4